Halloween for us has always been a fun family tradition. We’ve always steered away from the scary gruesome costumes and decorations, and instead embraced the carving pumpkins, drinking apple cider, pizza party and fun costumes part of Halloween.  It’s usually a large family affair, with my parents, and brother and sister’s families coming over, and we pass out candy and pencils with a Bible verse on them, to all the trick or treaters.  It’s always fun to see how excited the kids are to get a pencil, along with the candy of course.

Since we’ve always lived in neighborhoods that get tons of trick or treaters, it’s always been nice to greet the kids and meet the neighbors.   The past few years we’ve had around 500 trick or treaters each year.

My kids get excited about picking out their own costumes, although we don’t do anything horror related, and really they’ve never wanted to be anything like that. We try to keep the cost reasonable, or do something homemade.  As I was going through old Halloween pictures, I asked my daughter why she had the same costume on 2 years in a row, and she said, “When you let me buy the butterfly costume, it was more expensive, and you said I had to wear it two years in a row!”  I didn’t even remember!  😛

In case you’re in need of some last minute ideas, here’s a list of some “non-scary” Halloween costume ideas:

• Lumber jack
• Old lady — really funny when it’s a teen boy (with a walker) hamming it up the whole time (wink-my nephew)
• Old man
• Bat — my daughter’s idea who loves all animals
• Tigger or Pooh
• Ladybug
• Scarecrow
• Ninja
• Movie characters
• Princess
• Butterfly
• Soldier
• Puppy or Kitty
• Clown
• Laura Ingalls
• Superhero
• Food item like cheese, ketchup, doughnut etc…
• Dinosaur
• Angel
• Construction worker
• Cheerleader
• Raggedy Ann or Andy
• Doctor or nurse
• Sport’s player
• Policeman or Fireman

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Make sure you and your children stay safe on Halloween!

Here’s a good post from one of our Think Tank Thursday participants, Let It Shine, that gives some helpful tips on staying safe, while having fun on Halloween.